She seems sort of lost.' I thought, Lost how? How am I lost? Suddenly I felt lost.

I tried to avoid Mimi. Her presence seemed to call forth every rejection I'd ever experienced-the teachers who'd looked at me as though I held no promise, the boys who didn't like me back. Around her, I became fourteen again.

Whenever people say they didn't like the main character of a book, they mean they didn't like the book. The main character has to be a friend? I don't get that.

The only relationships I haven't wrecked right away were the ones that wrecked me later.

You did the best you could," and she seemed to believe I had. I said, "I've just been going through the motions," using the expression my father had after he'd watched my first tennis lesson. "Sweetie," she said, "that's what a lot of life is.

It might sound ordinary for a woman to find out her husband's cheating on her, but not if you're the woman and it's your husband.

You sense that he's dangerous but don't now why - and wonder if it's because he makes you feel safer than you've ever felt.